Abelian functional equations, planar web geometry and polylogarithms

Abstract

In this paper, we study local solutions F=(F1,..,Fn) of a general functional equation of the form F1(U1(x,y))+....+Fn(Un(x,y))=0. A such equation will be called an ``abelian functional equation'' (Afe). We will restrict ourselves to the case when the inner functions Ui's are real rational functions. First we prove that if the components Fi of F are measurable then they are analytic and are characterized as solutions of a certain linear differential equation constructed from the Ui's. Then we apply our results to the resolution of Afe's which are generalised versions of the classical functionals equations satisfied by low order polylogarithms. In the last section, these results, interpreted in the frame of web geometry, give us new exceptional webs, related to configurations of points in CP2. Finally, we study the problem of characterizing the dilogarithm (resp. the trilogarithm) by Rogers (resp. Spence-kummer) functional equation.